U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,853,446 and 4,855,424 disclose and claim novel compounds and compositions which have been found to inhibit the build-up of scale on the walls of vinyl chloride polymerization reactors. Such reactor scale interferes with heat transfer, and consumes valuable monomer which is lost to the final products, and results in the increase in waste product that must be disposed of safely.
The above listed patents disclose the use of the additive of the invention in various polymerization reactions for making polyvinyl chloride including emulsion polymerization, bulk or mass polymerization, suspension polymerization and microsuspension polymerization.
It is the purpose of this invention to provide an improved microsuspension process to demonstrate reduced reactor wall fouling or scale deposits, as well as flocculated material, during polymerization of vinyl chloride and other monomers. The microsuspension process of the invention is characterized in that the polymerization is conducted in a tubular reaction zone without agitation. The microsuspension process used in the process of this invention is disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,981,722; 4,377,672, and 4,528,337, the disclosures of which are incorporated herein by reference.